


Trust Falls Would Be Easier

by BabylonsFall



Category: Leverage
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, I'm really not sure how to tag this, Minor Alec Hardison/Parker, Parker and Nate only show up briefly, Post Episode: s05e03 The First Contact Job, Relationship Study, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 14:20:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13905846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BabylonsFall/pseuds/BabylonsFall
Summary: "He kind of expects Eliot to...doubt? ignore? him for a little while, after the stunt he pulled with the satellite. Eliot is not someone you fuck with, plain and simple. Nothing against the guy, Hardison gets it, as much as he can. If it was a pride thing, maybe Hardison would poke at him a little harder, rub against the grain a bit more to rile him up, but that wasn’t what it was about. It was about an ingrained need to react, react quickly and react well—and if you messed with his ability to do so, he got frustrated."Or, Hardison notices how much Eliot listens to him. So, like any curious sort, he pokes at the issue  Just a bit. Just until he can figure outwhy.





	Trust Falls Would Be Easier

**Author's Note:**

> Still dealing with a massive writer's block. But [this gifset](http://insertusernameici.tumblr.com/post/171584785414) reminded me of a couple thoughts I have on Hardison and Eliot's relationship, and then...well, this happened.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

He first notices it shortly after they get back from dealing with Kanack.

He kind of expects Eliot to...doubt? ignore? him for a little while, after the stunt he pulled with the satellite. Eliot is not someone you fuck with, plain and simple. Nothing against the guy, Hardison gets it, as much as he can. If it was a pride thing, maybe Hardison would poke at him a little harder, rub against the grain a bit more to rile him up, but that wasn’t what it was about. It was about an ingrained need to react, react quickly and react well—and if you messed with his ability to do so, he got frustrated.

Nate had plenty of experience with that.

So Hardison only poked at it every once in awhile—because he was still himself—when he knew it wouldn’t hurt nothing. But still, he expected Eliot to...well, react more. Outside of giving him a scare in Lucille anyway. Maybe hesitate the next time he told him something. Talk back. Be a brat—and he knew Eliot would growl at that, but honestly. They were both brats sometimes while they were bickering, that was just a fact.

But, next job—simple, three day in and out, where the only complication was that the easiest way out was through—Hardison called out a quick path change, right instead of left, and Eliot turned on a dime without a word.

He doesn’t know why  _ that  _ pings his attention, but it does. And thinking back over their past jobs,  _ that  _ pings his attention too. So he starts watching. Paying attention. Taking notes. All the things a naturally curious sort like him should when faced with something new, honestly.

* * *

So it’s definitely a thing.

Every once in awhile, Hardison’ll poke at Eliot when there’s no harm, just to see what he’ll do. And without fail, Eliot’ll move however Hardison asks him to. And, without fail, there’ll never be a hitch in his step when the situation turns serious.

_ Hey E, help me move this equipment _ works for a good ten minutes before he realizes Hardison’s leading him circles. He gets a shoulder shove and a growled “dammit, Hardison.” But on the actual job the next day? Hardison calls out a security count and a route only he can see, and Eliot goes even though he’s stuck in the equivalent of a maze.

_ Man, map says we’ve gotta go right!  _ works until they wind up back at the brewpub. Eliot blinks at the sign, then at Hardison...and then Hardison is on his ass on the curb, Eliot yelling at him to get Parker to drive him instead before he drives off. He’s back five minutes later, glaring out the windshield, even as Hardison clambers in with a grin. There’s a grumbled threat that if he pulls a stunt like that again, he really will leave him to Parker’s driving skills. Hardison doesn’t believe him for a second, but he puts his hands up in surrender and navigates perfectly for the rest of the trip and Eliot doesn’t glare at him once (for that, anyway).

_ Eliot, hold this  _ is an easy one, and Hardison’s not completely sure he should count it. But, Eliot doesn’t even blink, just holds the receiver Hardison handed him and stands still. He didn’t even ask Hardison why, or for what, just continued the conversation around Hardison’s request without breaking stride. It took fifteen minutes for him to realize that he was essentially holding scrap metal, at which point he rolled his eyes and tossed it over his shoulder, ignoring Hardison’s squawk. Hardison ends up handing him a...well, actually, Hardison’s not entirely sure what it was. He’d pulled it out of a fried server bank, it was covered in wires and sparking slightly. Hence why it went to Eliot. Who took it in basically the same manner he’d taken the junk receiver—without a word, and without breaking the conversation (read: argument) they had going on.

* * *

“He’s not going to stop.” Parker said, voice soft in the dark of their room. The only light came from the windows on the wall across from them—occasional faint streaks of gold from headlights and an off-pale haze from the streetlights at the corner. Hardison had been half asleep when her voice had broken the silence, but it was easy enough to shake himself awake enough to turn on his side, giving her his attention.

“Hmm?” Okay, maybe not easy, but there was an attempt made. Parker liked starting conversations in the middle of the night, when both of them were muzzy with sleep, heavy on the pillows, loose and easy, so he was used to it, even if his brain sometimes took a little while to catch up.

“Listening to you. He’s not going to stop.” She repeats. She’s not looking at him, brights eyes instead alternately tracking the headlights that paint over their ceiling or watching the windows, faint glints of reflections the only thing letting Hardison track her attention.

“...Was I that obvious?” Hardison asks, a thread of guilt curling in his stomach. For  _ what  _ he’s not entirely sure. There wasn’t any harm done right? He was just testing a theory. And Eliot hadn’t complained. Probably hadn’t even noticed.

Parker shrugged in a way that Hardison had figured out meant, more or less ‘For me. Not sure about everyone else.’ Well, that was a relief then.

“Think I should stop?” Not that he would  _ completely _ . That would just throw a red flag up in all kinds of places. But he could stop...trying to test the theory so much. Probably should anyway, regardless of what Parker ends up saying. Because she was right. Eliot wasn’t going to stop. Hardison knew that—probably could’ve accepted that after he’d noticed the whole thing with Kanack. But, well. He liked to poke things. Figure things out. How they ticked, why they worked.

“...Why were you doing it in the first place?” Parker asks instead of answering. There’s no judgement in her tone, no accusation. And Hardison’s hit for a moment there, remembering why they work so well sometimes. They’re both curious sorts. They both need to see as many angles as possible. He focuses on linear, branching sequences, he doesn’t work them over like she does—doesn’t fit giant, intricate puzzles together—but the impulse is the same.

And Hardison has to pause, because he doesn’t really have an answer for her. Sure, he was curious. But  _ why  _ he was curious? He...has no idea. So he shrugs helplessly, uncomfortably, after a couple minutes, shifting enough to press his face into the pillow when she turns to look at him. She may not judge him for his impulses, but without a solid foundation to defend his actions, he still feels uneasy under her scrutiny.

“He’s going to ask. Sooner or later. Might want to figure it out.” Is all she offers before shifting onto her side, back to him, and scooting back to forcibly turn their starfishing into spooning. He can’t help but laugh even as he gets a mouthful of hair, feeling himself relax as he slings an arm around her waist to pull her even closer.

* * *

Hardison backs off a bit. Tries to reign in tugging on Eliot’s chain back to what it was before their job with Kanack. The problem is, he doesn’t really...know how much that actually was. It had been an unconscious thing before, one that was just part of how him and Eliot interacted. Now that’s he’d drawn attention to it, he was almost painfully aware of it, and didn’t have a baseline to fall back on.

Kind of like noticing his own breathing out of nowhere, and then having to deal with the next uncomfortable minutes, brain shifting gears from unconscious to conscious and not quite knowing the way back.

Because Parker was right, Eliot would notice, and Eliot would ask, and Hardison didn’t have an answer for him, so he wanted to stop  _ before  _ Eliot asked.

He still didn’t think he’d done anything wrong, not really. It was harmless fun, and like Parker had said, Eliot wasn’t going to change what he was doing. It was a pattern before Hardison had noticed after all. Before Hardison had made it a  _ thing _ .

(But a little piece of his brain told him that, even if he hadn’t done anything explicitly  _ wrong _ , it was walking that line between iffy and okay, messing with Eliot on purpose like that, now that he had a moment to stop and  _ think _ , and he should probably back off. Probably should’ve backed off earlier. He hated that part of his brain honestly, even if it was right.)

But, again, there was that problem of lacking a baseline. He didn’t have one to fall back on, so when he backed off, he kind of. Backed off completely.

He stopped asking Eliot to move, to hold, to stand still, to follow. When he spoke up over the comms to change plans, even he could hear the hesitant skip in his tone sometimes—waiting that half second to remember how to sound natural.

And  _ that  _ is apparently a problem. For each half-second hitch his directions on the job go through, there’s a half-step where Eliot...hesitates, before following through like always. Hardison’s not sure if it’s  _ every  _ time, since he doesn’t always have a camera on him. But he does often enough that he can be pretty sure that if it’s not happening every single time, it’s happening  _ most  _ of the time.

As far as problems go, that’s a big one.

Eliot hesitating means a step closer for any security, means that split second where they can call for backup before he’s on them, that breath between Eliot moving easily between careful, cautious, and fluid, focused.

* * *

Nate doesn’t  _ say  _ anything about it—the new tension that’s been slowly creeping up between Hardison and Eliot.

(Although...that’s not really fair. The tension’s all on Hardison’s side. Eliot mostly just looks...frustrated and confused.)

But he does shoot Hardison a  _ look _ , eyebrow raised, head tilted, after the last job’s loose ends have been tied up. And Hardison huffs, because that’s what he normally does when Nate decides to interfere in his personal choices. But he gets it, he does. He shrugs a shoulder, and Nate backs off. He’ll fix this, it’s fine.

* * *

In Hardison’s defense, he had a plan. A very good plan. Cornering Eliot while he was in the kitchen in the brewpub—where the man knew all the exits, would have a comforting knife in his hand, would already be relaxed because he was a weirdo who relaxed best with cutlery flying through his hands around open flames—where they would have a talk while Eliot was mostly focused on his food and therefore wouldn’t really have the chance to get too mad at Hardison. He’d weighed the pros and cons of having a conversation like that around sharp things and fire and a possibly angry Eliot and, well. Relaxed Eliot was all the pros he’d needed, so.

Anyway. He’d had a plan. It was  _ not  _ his fault that Eliot had apparently decided that his plan wasn’t good enough and to come up with one of his own.

Which is why he found himself blinking at the empty space in his lap that had, two seconds ago, had his laptop. Slowly panning up, he sees Eliot standing in front of him, arms crossed in front of his chest, laptop nowhere to be seen, face scrunched up in that same frustrated/confused scowl of the last couple of weeks.

“...What’s up?” Is about all Hardison can manage honestly. He’s actually kind of surprised how steady it comes out. Eliot snorts at him.

“That’s what you’re going with? He asks. And Hardison shrugs because, yeah, that’s about all he’s got. Eliot lets out a noise—frustrated, growly, tired. Hardison winces slightly, because if he didn’t feel bad earlier, he definitely does now. “Can you at least tell me what’s wrong?” Hardison tries to answer, even though he still doesn’t actually know what to say, but Eliot barrels on, raking a hand through his hair and glaring at the couch beside Hardison more than at Hardison himself, “Are you and Parker fighting or something? Nate piss you off? Did I do something?”

And it’s that last one that finally pulls Hardison to his feet with an emphatic “No!” And perhaps an over enthusiastic flail. He only narrowly misses smacking Eliot in the face—and it’s definitely more a testament to how well Eliot knows him and when to move out of the way than any skill on Hardison’s part.

“Then what’s going on.” It’s supposed to be a question, even if it doesn’t sound like one. Too frustrated to bother with things like specific tones.

“Okay, first off, this is completely my fault, okay? Okay. All on me, man. Second, I’m sorry. That actually probably should’ve been first, but ah, whatever. I’m sorry, it wasn’t supposed to end up like this, I made it weird, and then it got weirder, and I didn’t know how to stop it. It’s kinda like when you notice your breathing you know? You notice, and suddenly you can’t stop it? And it’s weird for a while while you try to figure out how to go back to normal and-”

“Hardison.” Well, at least he looks more confused than frustrated now. It’s not a vast improvement, but Hardison’ll take what he can get.

So, pause. Breathe. Try again. “Okay, so, you remember the whole deal with the satellite and the field? When you ended up doing a really slow version of the cha cha slide?” And he’s back to frustrated, like just remembering the event is annoying for Eliot, “Right, that. Well, I noticed you didn’t really...I mean, you listened, man.”

Eliot blinks at him. Once. Twice. And nope, still confused. “...So?”

Right. Hardison can explain better than that. Maybe. “So...I mean. I started. Noticing? That you don’t really...question? When I tell you to do stuff. Like. Ever. Even when I’m messing with you. So I started doing it more? Just to see what you’d do?”

“You sound real sure there.”

“...I purposely started fucking with you more to see if I could figure out  _ why _ . Then Parker pointed out that that’s probably not a good idea because it’s not like you were going to stop if we’ve gone this long. So I tried to stop. But since I hadn’t even noticed it before I didn’t know how to go  _ back _ to what it had been before, so I ended up trying to stop telling you what to do. Period. And it made things weird and I’m sorry.” Hardison finishes, spreading his hands in a half-hearted ‘that’s it’ motion, only narrowly missing hitting Eliot again and realizing that, oh, right, he’s still standing basically in the man’s space. So he drops back on the couch, dragging a hand down his face with a huff, bracing himself for Eliot’s reaction.

It’s quiet for a long couple of moments. Considering how much of that was a word vomit, Hardison figures it’s only fair to let Eliot have a minute to parse what the hell he said. Doesn’t mean he’s comfortable with it though, and he can’t quite keep himself from fidgeting. Just a bit.

“...You couldn’t just ask?” Eliot’s voice is quiet, and when Hardison risks a glance up, Eliot’s watching him, arms crossed over his chest again, eyebrow raised, looking supremely unimpressed. And like he might be fighting back a grin.

“Would you have answered?” Hardison shoots back, on auto-pilot. Because bickering and jabs is what they do, and he’s kind of floundering at the lack of any real reaction on Eliot’s part.

Eliot rolls his eyes, flipping his hair out of his face in a way he swears he never does and that Hardison and Parker love to point out all the time. Not the time for it though. (Dammit.) “Why don’t you try?”

Hardison eyes him for a long moment, Eliot meeting his look head on, before he leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of him. It makes the angle he has to look up at Eliot a little sharper on his neck, but he feels less vulnerable like this—less like a kid who might’ve just fucked up a little and was trying to save face.

“...Okay. Why do you....You argue with Nate every damn job. You question and pick at him except in emergencies. And you never have with me. So why?” It’s not the most coherent question, but hopefully Eliot gets it.

Eliot shrugs like it’s nothing. “Because I know you. Yeah, you fuck around, but not when we’re in any danger. On the job, I know your only concern is getting us out safe, and I know how many contingencies are going through that big ol’ brain of yours at all times. The plans you give me? The best you can do, and the best you can do is usually pretty damn good. And I’d rather deal with looking like an idiot occasionally, have a laugh, if it means my instinctive reaction is to listen later.” His gaze turns sharp, “I trust you.”

And Hardison has no words for that.

Of course he  _ knew  _ Eliot trusted him. Their team wouldn’t work if they all didn’t trust each other almost implicitly. It just  _ wouldn’t _ . But they all still had things they played close to the chest. They all had those things they’d always side-eye, always kick up a fuss about—always would, ten, fifteen, twenty years out, nevermind the five they had under their belts.

But to know that Eliot willingly tied his instincts to Hardison’s say-so—that their hitter, who was all motion, action, reaction, muscle memory and instinct, willingly put himself in Hardison’s hands...That was something else entirely.

Eliot snorted, lightly cuffing the side of his head, snapping Hardison out of his processing. “Don’t let it go to your head, Hardison. That big ol’ brain of yours is big enough.” He says, grinning sharply, even though Hardison is half a second late in his expected insulted squawk. And Hardison can’t help but laugh a moment later, waving Eliot off, answering his look— _ are we okay? _ —with a smile and a nod. Eliot rolls his eyes again (and seriously, his face is gonna stick like that, Hardison’s sure of it), but he grins and heads off.

It’s only when Eliot’s out the door to the brewpub’s dining area that Hardison realizes something.

“What’d you do with my laptop? Eliot? Eliot!”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments are always loved and greatly appreciated!
> 
> I'm not as active with content as I'd like right now, but come yell at me on [tumblr](http://distinctivelibrarians.tumblr.com) if you'd like!


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